Quote:
Originally Posted by Inziladun
I don't know that I buy Bombadil as Aulë, but that's another thread.
It seems to me much more likely that Gandalf would have appeared, to the hobbits at least, just as he did in Middle-earth.
If he indeed, as I think, wasn't bound to any particular form and could change at will, why not keep on the "clothing" with which his friends were familiar?
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It sort of depends on how "accurate" the clothing was. In other words, did Gandalf in his Middle earth guise merely look like an old man, or since it was an incarnate body, would he also
feel like an old man. It is mentioned that the only thing that aged the Ishtari was the rigors of their labors, but Gandalf's labors were pretty rigorus (not to mention that, if the UT tales chapter is taken as canon, Gandalf came in a form much older than any of the other Istari right off the bat. They all have staffs, but Gandalf is the only one specifcally described as NEEDING one to get around.) If the latter, I can imagine Gandalf, once he was permitted to do so, might very well at least take on the form of a somewhat younger man; one free of whatever aches and pains the age of his "Greycloak" incarnation plauged him with. He could still look enough like his old self to be recognizable to his friends as Gandalf, just a healthier, fitter, more nimble Gandalf.